


Dead Reckoning

by pipistrelle



Category: Doctor Who, The X-Files
Genre: Corsairverse, Crossover, Dana Scully Is a Time Lord, Episode: s07e01 The Sixth Extinction, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-05 01:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17315495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: A scene from the Corsairverse, where Dana Scully is a Time Lord. In "The Sixth Extinction", a new environment wakes old memories.





	Dead Reckoning

**Author's Note:**

> I'm cleaning out old files and posting things that are ready for posting. This is a little ficlet from the Corsairverse, in which Dana Scully is a regeneration of the Time Lord known as the Corsair, whose memories have been locked away. For more details see my other corsairverse fic, "terra incognita".
> 
> Takes place during Scully's time in the jungle. Because the only thing that could possibly have mader her character MORE badass was the addition of a sword.

Rationally, Dana Scully knows that she has never held a sword before in her life. Her memory tells her that the biggest blade she's ever handled has been a bone saw, and she's never exactly had to use that on a moving target.

But something in her knows the feel and heft of the leather-wrapped hilt in her hand, the silver shine of the edge in the moonlight that reflects from the surface of the sea. The blade isn't hers; one of the local men who guided her to the crash site gave it to her, with plenty of laughter and humorous gestures. She didn't mind that he thought it was funny to see a diminutive American woman confronting strangers with a glorified butcher knife. She smiled at him as her hand closed over the hilt, to let him know that she didn't mind.

Strangely, he had stopped laughing after that.

There are plenty of dangers, even here in this secluded crash site, and the instincts she's honed in the FBI serve her well. But there are other, deeper instincts that surface in her mind like the slow drag of undersea currents. Things that she can't explain. Among a thousand other things she can't explain, some of them lethal, it isn't exactly her highest priority to try and figure out how she can move so assuredly with a weapon she's never trained with.

After more after more than a week at the crash site and plenty of threats, she's never once reached for her gun. The blade feels more solid, somehow, more personal. Maybe Mulder could have explained it to her, if he were here, and himself.

One more mystery among millions. A drop in the ocean. She devotes her whole intellect to deciphering the fragments of script the men bring in, and puts unexplained weapon proficiencies out of her mind.

When the headlights of Dr. Barnes' truck glare through the wall of her tent, she doesn't hesitate. The blade is in her hand and she's moving out onto the beach before she has time to think -- only she is thinking, already thinking of how to move, where to step, to cut high --

\-- (aim for the eyes, this body doesn't have the luxury of reach) --

\-- hips before hands. Hadn't Mulder told her that? They'd been playing baseball. A bat was hardly the same as a blade, but the principle was sound, center of gravity low, stance wide (easier than swinging from the rigging with the cutlass between your teeth) --

\-- then she comes back to herself, blinking in the glare of the headlights as Barnes' driver speaks to her in an alien tongue.

She's never held a sword before. The only explanation she can think of is some dim, half-forgotten memory from her early childhood, some game she learned once that's coming to her aid now. Had she once pretended to be a pirate?

If there hadn't been a million mysteries and Mulder to distract her, maybe -- just maybe -- she might have heard, in the back of her mind, laughter like the crashing of the waves.


End file.
